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ARS Home » Pacific West Area » Pullman, Washington » Plant Germplasm Introduction and Testing Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #405442
Research Project: Genetic Resource and Information Management for Pulse, Temperate Forage Legume, Oilseed, Vegetable, Grasses, Sugar, Ornamental, and Other Crops

Location: Plant Germplasm Introduction and Testing Research

Title: A hypervariable intron of the STAYGREEN locus provides discrimination among Pisum fulvum accessions and reveals evidence for a relatively recent hybridization event with Pisum sativum

Author
item WEEDEN, NORMAN - Montana State University
item LAVIN, M. - Montana State University
item ABBO, SHAHAL - Hebrew University
item Coyne, Clarice - Clare
item MCPHEE, KEVIN - Montana State University

Submitted to: Frontiers in Plant Science
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 8/15/2023
Publication Date: 8/25/2023
Citation: Weeden, N., Lavin, M., Abbo, S., Coyne, C.J., McPhee, K. 2023. A hypervariable intron of the STAYGREEN locus provides discrimination among Pisum fulvum accessions and reveals evidence for a relatively recent hybridization event with Pisum sativum. Frontiers in Plant Science. 14:1233280. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2023.1233280.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2023.1233280

Interpretive Summary: Related species to crop plants such as garden pea, are referred to as crop wild relatives. These wild relatives serve as a genetic reservoir for useful genes for traits such as disease resistance or drought tolerance as examples. This study examined the sequence of one gene called 'stay green' associated with stress tolerance to assist in our understanding of the genetic relationship between the crop pea Pisum sativum and its wild relative, Pisum fulvum.

Technical Abstract: An analysis 82 non-synonymous Pisum fulvum accessions for sequence variation in a fragment of the STAYGREEN (SGR) locus revealed 57 alleles, most of which differed in indel structure. Eight additional P. fulvum accessions, each supposedly synonymous with a different accession of the initial group, were also analyzed. In every case the paired synonymous accessions possessed the same SGR sequence but varied slightly for a 6-trait morphological phenotype, indicating that SGR sequence would be a much more reliable indicator of accession identity than would a morphological characterization. SGR sequence analysis confirmed our previous finding that P. fulvum accessions separate into two allele groups. This division was not supported by results of other researchers who examined sequences distributed across the entire genome, suggesting that the division may have been produced by selection at a nearby locus. One P. fulvum accession, PI 595941 (=JI1796), displayed an SGR sequence outside the variation typical of the species. Instead, its allele resembled alleles limited to a set of Pisum sativum landraces from the Middle East, suggesting hybridization between ancestors of PI 595941 and primitive domesticated P. sativum. With one exception from the extreme northwest corner of Israel, P. fulvum accessions collected north of latitude 35.5o N were fixed for alleles from group A. Accessions with a group B allele were distributed from Lake Tiberas south, mostly along the west border of the West Bank, to the southernmost range of the species. Except for this geographical pattern, we were unable to find much correlation between SGR genotype and plant phenotype or ecological habitat.